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Of Mice and Men
by John Steinbeck Of Mice and Men is a story of two men who work at a ranch to make enough money to own their own land. This is a story of a man's loneliness and how man can't follow a dream without a companion. Men, Loneliness, and Mice by User:Vahan010 Loneliness drives dreams, dreams of not being lonely. This is the main idea of the novel Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck. It is a story of two men, George, who is “small and quick and dark of face” (pg.2), and Lennie, who is a grown man with the mind of a child. George is Lennie’s brain and Lennie is George’s hands and feet. Both of them have a dream of owning their own land, but they can never keep a job (where they get their money for their land from) because Lennie always does something wrong. So why does George still stick by Lennie even if he can’t get close to their dream? Maybe because George fears having to going on, on his own; and when he is lonely, he finds comfort at a whorehouse. This is Steinbeck’s philosophy: Like mice, men find comfort in groups. Based in California, in the Salinas Valley, George and Lennie land a job at a ranch hoping to get paid and buy their own land. They just escaped from Weed after Lennie felt a silk dress and made a girl into thinking she was being molested. I always asked my self: Why does Lennie like petting and felling soft things? Is it because it is the only way he finds comfort or is it just a fetish? George doesn’t know and especially neither will Lennie because he always forgets things. Comfort or fetish, Lennie just likes the feel of those soft textures, and he particularly likes rabbits. The only problem is that Lennie kills living things without knowing it because his mind isn’t capable of knowing his own strength. Teddy may be mentally retarded, but most of the characters in the story are as just as dumb as Lennie because this is an area where education is low and people talk in slang. George is like one of these characters; he isn’t book smart but street smart. He is Lennie’s talker, he orders Lennie around, makes him do acts that humor him, or just simply talks for him especially when he tries to land himself and Lennie a job. Sometimes the boss gets suspicious for George being Lennie’s mouth, so George replies by saying, “He got kicked in the head by a horse when he was a kid.” (pg. 22) Lennie may be too dependent on George because every time a person asks Lennie a question or is punching him, Lennie always turns to George for help. George helped break that cycle by telling Lennie to fight back when Curley was punching Lennie. There is a philosophy in this book, and it involves man’s need for a companion and how man, himself, would throw away his own companion when it was necessary. Like when Candy wished he shot his own dog instead of Carlson, because he thought that the dog would be better off seeing candy last then Carlson. The book’s philosophy also involves George and Lennie. Even though Lennie is a burden to George, George still wants a companion, a friend, even though he is mentally challenged. Lennie feels bad for George for being his burden, so he always offers a solution: “Well, I can go away, I’ll go right off in the hills an’ find a cave if you don’ want me.” (pg.104) George says in return that if that were true he would not spend his money on a cathouse (for comfort) but instead on the land that they both always wanted. A dream that they can both share, as friends, oh, and Candy too. In conclusion, we can all relate to Of Mice and Men because we all want a companion, and yes, we have been their where we had to kill our own companion. It’s sad really, we can’t live life alone, and we must have someone there that we can share our deepest feelings with. Anyone, especially for Steinbeck’s characters who have no family members, they are all alone, and they don’t care where they go. All they care is if they will have enough money to gamble or to go to a whorehouse. Like Crook says in the book, “Nobody never gets to heaven, and nobody gets no land. It’s just in their head.” (pg. 74) Works Cited and Bibliography Steinbeck, John. Of Mice and Men. New York, New York: Penguin, 1993. xanta po